i was very interested to read your post on outsourcing in general and regarding call centres in particular. Due to mental health problems triggered by stress principally i need to work in a relatively stress free environment so i work in a call centre on the phones i ignore the targets by and large and my managers all know i'm very good on the phone but my job is being outsourced to India.
I think I do a good job because i can mostly handle the range of accents, i can handle the problems and usually diffuse the complainers. I believe in free markets and I like the idea of wealth creation going to the developing world through outsourcing. I suspect a lot of the outsourced call centres will return to locations staffed by people more linguistically in tune with the target audience. It is sometimes a challenge to catch the gist of a 70 year old Tynesider who is beginning show signs of Alzheimer's. I sometimes have to listen very carefully and i'm English with an English degree.

Call centers in India are for companies that don't give a shit about customer service.

the problem is that the people who make these outsourcing decisions are completly cut off from the day to day customer service level
they're quite happy to let customers wait on the phone for 20 minutes minimum in a queue ( i speak to people all day long who've been trying to get through to someone all day long and they phone the line i work on because it has short queues but i just have to explain that there's nothing i can do and that i have no shortcuts)
these managers see that it is a low paid job and consider it unskilled and don't understand that one of the skills in this case is having an intuititive understanding of the language, and the culture, from being raised in it ( a point which therefore includes my British-Asian colleages, born in Leicester, a city which according to Wikipedia is due shortly to have a population where the majority is not ethnically white European.)
the bean counters will learn by market forces that there is more to customer service than just having a warm body on the other end of a telephone; and that's once the customers have negiotiated the automated call menu system which customers generally hate (they can be a useful tool but there are so many badly designed ones that won't just let you speak to a person or are just plain badly designed)

RE: India: Why Apple Walked Away

Rebecca Holdcroft likes to "express" herself through body art. However, she felt she was being discriminated against at work and contacted the BBC News website to express her point of view.

Even though she does not deal with the public face-to-face, her latest employers told her she must wear a cardigan to conceal her tattoos. And in the hot weather, this can get unbearable, she says.

BBC NEWS | UK | Tattoo cover-up 'discriminates'

Japan and other pro-whaling nations have won a vote to move towards a resumption of commercial whaling, for the first time in 20 years.

*disgusted*

BBC NEWS | Science/Nature | Japan gains key whaling victory

Pessimism Without Panic

By DAVID BROOKS

The war in Iraq is more than three years old and I'm still no military expert. Fortunately, I've found people who are.

I've formed my own personal War Council, composed of 20 or 30 people whose judgments have been vindicated by events, whose analysis is based on firsthand knowledge and not partisan desire. Some members of my War Council I've never spoken to, while others grow weary when they hear my voice yet again on the phone. But I clip their reports, study their pronouncements and my mood tracks the ebbs and flows of their wisdom.

All the members of my unwitting council have grown more pessimistic over the past year. Some believe the odds of eventual success are over 50 percent, others believe they are well under. But none have said it's time to admit defeat and withdraw.

Their faith that success is still plausible is based on a few key realities. First, the morale of American forces remains high. As Barry McCaffrey, a retired general, reported after his recent trip to Iraq, "In every sensing session and interaction (with U.S. forces), I probed for weakness and found courage, belief in the mission, enormous confidence in their sergeants and company grade officers."

Second, Iraqi forces are performing with increasing competence. While the first attempt to train an Iraqi military was a bust, there are now roughly 235,000 Iraqi troops. Andrew Krepinevich of the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments notes that these Iraqi troops, though often underequipped, do not run from combat and have not betrayed American advisers. They have fought and led the fighting, courageously and effectively.

Third, the U.S. ambassador, Zalmay Khalilzad, has helped pull off a political miracle. The December election results seemed to favor fundamentalists, but he and the Iraqis have put together a credible government that cuts across sectarian divides and has roots in different communities. The Times's übercorrespondent, John Burns, recently told Charlie Rose that he was originally skeptical that legitimate Sunni leaders would really be willing to play a productive role in this government, but he is beginning to think he was wrong. "The Sunni Arab component of this new government is serious," he said.

Fourth, the Iraqi people are not irreparably divided. Phebe Marr of the U.S. Institute of Peace returned from Iraq and reported that while the situation "certainly has deteriorated" and was "teetering on the brink," there was a sensible center. As she told the Council on Foreign Relations after time in Baghdad: "Almost everybody I know is appalled by this. First of all, they don't like the violence. Second of all, they really don't want the sectarian war."

Fifth, the new Iraqi government is at least trying to create competent administrative structures outside the Green Zone. "If I was a betting man, I'd have to say the odds are against success, but they ... [ Read More (0.2k in body) ]

Pessimism Without Panic - New York Times

On his way to the Bundestag, Germany's Parliament, Hans-Christian Str�bele usually rides his bicycle, but what he sees these days in Berlin's streets is not his cup of tea. Thousands of German soccer fans are waving German flags every night on the so-called "fan mile," which stretches west from the Brandenburg Gate.
...
As the president of the Bundestag, Norbert Lammert, put it this week when asked about the new patriotism, "It is the reconstruction of normalcy."

we will never forget but the generations born since the war are not responsible for the crimes committed by earlier generations

it disgusts me that English football fans try to offend ordinary Germans by doing Nazi salutes and goose stepping -- they only reveal their own ignorance

there is much to be proud in the new Germany

seeing thousands of Germans waving the gold, red and black flag is an odd sensation but "'a reconstruction of normalcy'" is a good thing or there is no hope of ever moving forward

German pride that surprises - Editorials & Commentary - International Herald Tribune

Jack, if you’re going to pick up girls from out of town, you could pick a better venue than the Pride parade. That’s all we’re saying.

I was thinking this might be better in humor but it's really both, so...

Republican Strategists, Sex, MySpace, and Pride: A Heartwarming DC Tale - Wonkette

Sometimes very important elections receive very little attention.

When the Southern Baptist Convention elected the Rev. Frank Page as the group's president at its meeting this week in Greensboro, N.C., the news appeared on the back pages of most secular newspapers -- or it didn't appear at all.

But Page's upset victory could be very significant, both to the nation's religious life and to politics. He defeated candidates supported by the convention's staunchly conservative establishment, which has dominated the organization since the mid-1980s. His triumph is one of many signs that new breezes are blowing through the broader evangelical Christian world.

A Shift Among the Evangelicals

A newly discovered asteroid in Neptune's orbit indicates the existence of a much larger, but as-yet-unseen, cloud of rocks in that region. The asteroids in Neptune's orbit might even outnumber those in the main asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter, the new research suggests.

New Scientist SPACE - Breaking News - New Trojan asteroid hints at huge Neptunian cloud

Open Notepad and type in this phrase, without the quote marks and with no carriage return: "Bush hid the facts". Now save it and open it again.

Seriously, try this before you click through this link.

27B Stroke 6: Fun MS bug.

MOSCOW, June 13 — On March 29, agents of the Interior Ministry seized 167,500 mobile phones that Motorola had shipped into Sheremetyevo Airport in Moscow, dragging the company into the Kafkaesque world where Russian justice intersects with business.

Wide-ranging coverage of Russia and the former Soviet republics, updated by The Times's Moscow bureau.
Vitaly Belousov/Itar-Tass

The Interior Ministry ground up 49,991 Motorola phones on April 25. About 117,000 seized phones remain in the government's hands.

The phones were first declared counterfeits, then contraband, then a health hazard, and now they are evidence in a criminal investigation focused, again, on suspected smuggling.

the wild east

Phone Seizure Seen as Example of Russian Corruption - New York Times